About

Hello and welcome to Bio Break, a blog devoted to MMORPGs, RPGs, and games that don’t have “RPG” in them!

I’m Syp, a gamer/writer/fugitive in my 40s. I’m married to a wonderful woman, have four kids, am a pastor of a church in New York, and am a reporter for Massively OP.

I’ve been gaming ever since I was a wee tyke on my Atari 2600, and grew up programming games, pouring over RPG manuals, and eventually becoming a big fan of MMORPGs. My MMO career really started in 2004 with City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, although I’ve played most everything since. “Syp” comes from a Gnome Warlock I created back in 2006, and I’ve used that and variations on that name ever since.

I began blogging in 2008 with WAAAGH!, a Warhammer Online blog that ran until early 2009. When my time in WAR came to an end, I realized that I didn’t want to stop blogging and instead wanted to comment on other MMOs and retro games well. That doesn’t fit so well in a Warhammer Online-specific blog, and rather than stretch the credibility of that blog too far, I decided to carve out another niche in the blogosphere and create Bio Break to handle the rest of my gaming interests.

My favorite MMOs over the years include Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Lord of the Rings Online, The Secret World, Fallen Earth, City of Heroes, Warhammer Online, RIFT, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and WildStar.

So why “Bio Break” as a title? Firstly, because “Exploding Sheep” was taken in the WordPress database. Alas. Bio Break is a gamer term that’s always amused me as a politic way of saying “I gotta go POTTY!” to your teammates, and it just sounded right as the title of a blog. It’s alliterative, not too serious, and has toilet humor built right in!

As a MMO gamer, I’ve been happy settling somewhere in the middle between “casual” and “hardcore”. I’m not much of a raider or a PvPer, and often become consumed by “fluff” and other trivial activities in games. I am always eager to try out new titles, and have been involved in MMOs ever since trying out Anarchy Online. On launch day.

You can follow me on Twitter (@Sypster) or email me at justinmassively -at- yahoo -dot- com.

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49 thoughts on “About”

GauldarDecember 17, 2008 / 7:02 pm

You should check out No More Heroes, the save point is a bathroom where the main character, pulls down his pants and sits down while the screen is covered in toilet paper. They even did a small promotion when the game was released, buy a copy and get a free roll of toilet paper.

Is there any reason you have comment moderation on? Not being about to chat back and forth with other commenters before you approve messages is a real drag.

SypJune 4, 2009 / 10:21 pm

I have comment moderation on for a few reasons. The first is that people still find ways to insert spam/gold selling crap into comments that the spam checker doesn’t filter. The second is that it forces me to read all the comments. And finally, I turned it on back in the day when we had some commentators being excessively rude to each other, which I don’t allow.

Re toilets in games: I’ve noticed a dire shortage of working conveniences both in Aion (which I’m playing at the moment) and WoW (which I was playing until recently). Maybe biology works differently in these worlds; after all, in both, you can go for indefinite periods without eating or drinking as well.

Conversely, Deus Ex features lots of toilets – and you could flush them, and wash your hands afterwards.

My name is John Markley. I write the video game commentary/humor website Pointless Side Quest at http://pointlesssidequest.blogspot.com/. I couldn’t find an e-mail address, so I’m posting here to ask to ask if you would consider adding me to the links at Bio Break. Thank you for your time.

Man, you seriously need a “follow” button, or a subscribe via email. I SUCK at keeping up with stuff in my RSS feed reader, and I don’t want to miss any of your posts.

Btw…I read your stuff on FE, and I have to say, I’m addicted too. I would offer to help start a support group, but I have no intentions of giving up my drugs.

Anyway….please get yourself an email subscription option for your blog. I’m going to go seek out your other writings and see if any of THEM will allow me the “lazy mode” of keeping up with your writing. lol 😉

I’ve had a link on mmo-symposium for a while to your blog, feel free to add one to us. 😉

Lord WussFebruary 3, 2010 / 9:55 am

Well i have been looking for your E-mail forever now…
i guess this will have to do..:D

Just wanted to say i am a big fan.
Started following your site a wile and it became my favorite very very quickly.

I love all the info you give and i always like to hear your opinions.

I really wanted to offer my services as a Big fan..
I know you don’t need any help with the writing 😛
but maybe i can help with some graphic and design?

I don’t know exactly what your skills with photoshop and stuff like that (even that you upload some cool stuff to the site).

just wanted to say . if u need any help with graphic and design juts yell out. (was thinking about it after i saw you changed your top banner).
was having some fun today at work. tell me what you think..

daveMarch 5, 2010 / 12:15 pm

big fan of yours since ddo went f2p and I found your site.

Have you tried global agenda yet? Not exactly an MMO(although it is marketed as one) but more of a shooter with some MMO features.

When I hear “Bio Break”, I think of final fantasy 3.. ahem, i mean 6… one of the espers you could equip enabled “Bio”, “Break” and “Doom”… all fairly nasty spells, when they decided to work.

A local health food spot on TV calls itself “Bio Break!”… I can’t see one of those pop up without wanting to play ff6…
“DO i equip that one, no, I have all the ice spells… cure1, cure 2, cure 3, got em, bio, break, doom? Eh, they suck, but I don’t have em yet.”

I am Amber and I am doing three way link exchanges. I recently came across your site
through search and found it good enough for link exchange. I have many good quality sites that can help you to increase your website ranking in Google search engines.

If you are also interested for link exchange with good quality sites then reply me and we can proceed accordingly.

Sypster, I’ve closed down my “Another Aion Blog” site (which you have graciously added in your blogroll) in favor of a new “general gaming” one called “Voodoo Gamer”, http://voodoogamer.wordpress.com/

Thanks and keep up the great work!

InsideTheCrawlSpaceDecember 13, 2010 / 11:31 pm

I just started publishing my DCUO posts now that the NDA has lifted over at my new blog. If you would not mind adding me to the blog roll I would appreciate it, if not I will still keep reading and enjoy your blog during my morning coffee!

Keep on gaming my friend and happy holidays.

InsideTheCrawlSpaceDecember 13, 2010 / 11:32 pm

Crap!

Insidethecrawlspace.wordpress.com

It has been a long night… I forgot to add it in my comment on the DC post you have too!

HokieinJaxJanuary 24, 2011 / 3:28 pm

Hey Syp..You didn’t happen to be driving through Jacksonville Fl this past weekend? I passed a car that had the license plate “SypStreak”….I thought of you….

Today we are announcing the launch of MMORaid.com, a new MMO social gaming news site, and we would like to invite you to join us. MMORaid is dedicated to bringing MMO fans the latest up-to-date information on all news and happenings in the MMO industry and communities from around the web.

We also know how hard it can be for smaller blogs and MMO news sites to get exposure for their articles. With this in mind our goal with MMORaid is to give smaller sites a chance at greater exposure by allowing our readers the opportunity to vote for what they believe are the most interesting articles.

Signing up is free and only takes a min to complete.

Regards,
Mike
MMORaid.com

p.s. If you are interested in a link exchange, please contact me back for more info.

Been using “brb bio” for a few years now. Funny thing: the other day I was listening in on a teleconference presentation, and the presenter (a friend who started playing WOW about a year ago) suggested that we take a ten minute “bio break.” Another buddy and I just laughed.

Chicago Tribune
Writing in the Atlantic in 2003, Jonathan Rauch made a joke. “Introverts are also not misanthropic,” he wrote, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say ‘Hell is other people at breakfast.’” Jean-Paul Sartre said nothing about bagels, but the Internet has turned Rauch’s bon mot into fact.

Mary Schmich was alerted to a piece by Kevin Delaney that “quoted” Sartre’s Rauch-written aphorism by Dan Bloom, a Taiwan-based blogger who spotted it in a Times supplement distributed with a Chinese newspaper. (I can vouch for Bloom’s interest in this matter; he’s copied me on 10 emails that he’s sent to the Times and others about the gaffe.)

Schmich called Fred Shapiro, who edited “The Yale Book of Quotations.” “Any time you see a quote attributed to Mark Twain, figure that one is false,” Shapiro told her. “Similarly with Yogi Berra and Benjamin Franklin.” (Indeed, Mike Daisey got a Twain quote wrong when he published his now-famous nonapology.) Schmich writes that one of her lines is now frequently attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, and that something she didn’t write is now often attributed to her.

Schmich warns readers to be wary of online quotes, but you don’t have to bother your iPhone to read an inaccurate quote. I live in the Washington, D.C., area, where a mangled quote recently got carved in stone, which is actually kind of a tradition around here.

It’s too bad Rauch didn’t make Sartre say “Hell is other people at brunch.” No one would have ever questioned that.

I was reading your MMO resume. We have played many of the same games at one point or another. Wonder if we ever bumped into each other. I also, much like you, play anything. I may not like it, but I love to find new games. I can literally say I’ve tried out at least a hundred MMO’s in the past ten years. I can’t even begin to name them all… Sad to say though, most feel exactly the same. I am still looking for that one that meets my expectations perfectly. I’m a game design student and my intent is to create my own perfect MMO one day. It’ll be cool to see what takes you and your followers have on different games to get an idea of what others view as the perfect MMO.

At Massively Op you wrote…
“While he was quite open about many subjects, Miller clammed up when he was pressed for details on his pitch for a proposed City of Heroes 2: “Well, you see… waitaminute, this isn’t a CoH question, this is a question about CoH2! Nice try!””

Was this pitch back when CoX was alive? Are we misunderstanding, or can you source that Matt Miller has made such a pitch? If so, when and to who?